3d chips & games: The overall experience..

Newcomer

I just came from my cousin's house when we played Fifa 2002 on a 19" monitor. His PC is an Intel BX board with a slot-1 Pentium II 500MHz and a Viper 550 card. For my surprise Fifa 2002 runs fine!!!!
It's running at 640x480 of course, but the overall experience is definatelly not worse than in my place (GF3, AMD 1,4, 17" monitor).

Soldier of Fortune runs acceptably and so does Blade of Darkness...
Sure they run at low resolutions and 16bit color, but still after a while you forget about these and concentrate on the game. Maybe the overall experience with those new features isn't all that great?
FSAA, 32bit color, more polygons are little small steps forward, but not leaps that would make me notice the differnce. Only Giats which uses Pixel Shaders attracted me by its graphics.

I don't get it!!! Was the TNT so powerful? Are the developers still aiming at the very low end? Why do we need so high and expensive PC gear, when old hardware still runs today games well?

I feel the need to upgrade to GF4 (marketing victim), although I know that my card will run great all today games and the games that will come in 1 year from now.

Do we actually need the GF4 card right now?I don't know why I wrote this...Just food for thought...

Veteran

Developers continue to really only write in DirectX 7, a great example is the Unreal 2 engine where Sweeny states its mostly Dx7 with a few Dx8 Features...and here is Dx 9 around the corner. Games are not progressing as it should because of the installed user base of Dx7 cards...sad.

Veteran

I think it makes excellent sense for game-companies to consider who will buy their product. For many classes of games, it would cut off a large number of potential buyers if the hardware requirements were too high.

Conversely, for some classes of games, it makes sense to put the level of graphics quality very high, since the game will stay marketable for a long time. A good example is the upcoming single player Morrowind where I feel they could have raised the bar even further.

Then of course the are the games which are playable with low framerates, but where higher framerates provide significant benefits. For instance Quake3, which is playable on my old iMac, but with its' 33 fps average on demofour, I am a bit stronger than the "HardCore" bots, whereas on my current rig I just played through the entire single player game on Nightmare after a reinstall to get my skulls back, without loosing a single level ...

And I see plenty of reviews that claim that Quake3 is playable with average framerates of 60-80 or so, which I would judge as totally unacceptable for my purposes.

However, before I had played the game on better equipment or with decent enough skill , how would I have known what I missed?

Different people have different needs, experiences and therefore expectations both regarding visual quality and framerates.
Producers try to cater to a wide audience. Tough job.

So how long will it take before for example pixel shaders are _required_?
Most likely Forever, which in this business means "definitely more than a year".
I can't begin to guess when DX9 features will be mandatory....

Regular

Developers can't risk creating a game that won't run on the majority of PCs because they don't have the hardware.

However IMO most people generally won't buy a new graphics card, unless it brings something significant and there are games which support those features.

There's also the fact of software lag, it takes a lot longer to write software than to create new hardware with more and faster features IMO. Although STM could give a few developers a run for their money...

Giants is interesting example, because it was (I believe) originally targeted at Voodoo1 cards.

Veteran

Id software releases games that always push the envelope and also force you to upgrade...I remember I was using a Canopus Pure 3D 6 meg Voodoo1 when Quake 2 was released..after playing with abysmal frames off I went to get a 12 meg Voodoo 2
Quake 3 was released my Voodoo 3500 died so off I went to get a GTS which died then got a Radeon 64meg. LOL If there is one company that forces a upgrade its ID software.

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